Reading Comics #93 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #2"

(via vertigocomics.com)

My reading of Leslie S. Klinger's Annotated Sandman continues:

In the second issue of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the reader gets a better idea of the comic book origins of the series, as well as its precedents, specifically in the appearances of Cain and Abel, who at one time served as hosts for House of Mystery and House of Secrets, respectively.  Klinger, as with the first issue and no doubt in many to come, is good to provide the exact details.  Somewhat curiously he also provides the complete biblical text for the famous siblings, possibly to catch any reader unfamiliar with them up to speed.  It is odd to think that so overtly religious figures would appear in comics that were otherwise not particularly religious, but this was also a time when Hollywood was routinely basing many of its high profile films on incidents from the Bible.

One way or another, it's a nice twist not just for the story at hand but on the relationship between the two.  You may recall that Cain slew Abel, the first murder.  They're the embodiment of the issue's title, "Imperfect Hosts" (that's something I neglected to mention with the first entry), which Klinger also explains in one of his notes.  The naming of individual issues in a series can often be a thankless art, but that's another thing that doesn't go overlooked in this project.

Recently liberated from nefarious clutches that kept him a prisoner for seventy years, Morpheus is trying to reclaim his life, and he needs figures like Cain and Abel to do it, to give him back some of the power that has basically been stolen from him.  A little like the Horcruxes in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga, tokens that Voldemort used to impart a portion of himself for safekeeping, Dream specifically has three items to retrieve: a pouch of sand, a helmet, and a ruby moonstone.

What's interesting about the early Sandman is its more direct ties to DC lore.  At the start, of course, there was no Vertigo, and so Sandman was more or less merely a quirky DC title.  It was a new vision of a character who'd existed since the Golden Age, Wesley Dodds, who was subsequently featured in the Vertigo series Sandman Mystery Theatre as well as in Mark Waid's Kingdom Come.

In this issue, one of the more obvious links to the mainstream is the appearance of Doctor Destiny, an old Justice League villain who also appears in Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum from the same period. We in fact visit him at Arkham in the issue, but he's not a very imposing figure at the moment.

Morpheus next visits another old DC host, Lucien, who was once Mr. Raven, and current custodian of Dream's home, which has suffered much in his time away.  He moves on to the Hecatae, Gaiman's embodiment of the Greek Fates (with apparently an abundance of other incarnations), who give him clues as to the current locations of the items he seeks.

Perhaps none of this is what you'd expect from a series that has been lauded long and loud, and yet it's exactly what it needs at this point.  As with many Gaiman stories, it's something of a travel narrative, a journey the main character takes in preparation of something greater.